The TiVo Roamio Summer Sale

Until now, the best way to get a deal on TiVo Roamio hardware was to cozy up to a reseller. Well, for what looks like a short while, their preferred pricing is now available in a more convenient manner via TiVo’s “summer flash” sale… with a few caveats. The base Roamio model with over-the-air capabilities is not available, perhaps so as to not undercut Best Buy, and the Pro model isn’t worth the $200 surcharge given low drive prices and a simple upgrade path. Which puts the $600 TiVo Roamio Plus in the sweet spot – 6 tuners and Lifetime service, shipped free. Of course, the upfront costs are hard to swallow for many (despite ultimate savings for cable subscribers over time) and I can’t recommend 4-tuner Premiere owners upgrade given similar capabilities in light of improved performance. But for those on older platforms, seeking more tuners, will benefit from native iPad playback, or simply awaiting a deal, this is probably as good as it gets over the near term.

That is the same price as the second cheapest iPad Air! Hard to swallow for people should be their $100/mo smartphone service. I guess it’s how you look at it. People use to think $49 for software was cheap until Apple priced iOS software at $0.99. Now people think $4.99 is expensive.

I will say that using TCF members is not a good indicator as techie guys are notorious for being cheap (women will attest to).

TiVo reached out to let me know the $50 off coupon is back in play. Not sure if folks’ll be able to get it going with the promo above, as supposedly they’re not stackable, but doesn’t hurt to try. Regardless, it will unlock some savings on the base four tuner Roamio – which isn’t covered above, but can be used with OTA or cable. Beyond that $150 hardware fee, you’re on your own for service. (Unless you need OTA, I’d really suggest the Plus/Pro given its extra tuners, increased recording capacity, MoCA bridge, iOS streaming.)

I jumped on this deal. Ordered a Roamio Plus and Tivo Mini to go with the Roamio Pro. Since the Tivo summer update reportedly improves the Premiere boxes significantly, I’ll reactivate that one, as well. What the heck, I’ll reactivate the old TivoHD too and be set!

$600 is a good deal, but I don’t really need it since I have a 2-tuner Premiere and a Slingbox (just would like Mini compatibility). Saw the $50 code Wednesday, which pushed me off the fence. They showed me the $550 price (which I screenshot), and charged my Amex that amount. Email confirmation showed $750. TiVo shipped that day. However, today they charged my Amex the $750 now. I’ll have to call and see if they’ll honor the $550 price, otherwise I think I won’t keep it.

Hopefully they honor the price given what the system showed you. Shame on them for shipping without contacting you given the price differential. Maybe it’s all automated (poorly)? You could get AmEx involved if it comes to it. But I hope they’ll do the right thing here.

The streaming bitrate range is limited and they still proxy. Both should be corrected/improved when they put official cellular streaming in play. Don’t think it can match a Slingbox as is, but the offloading feature if you have time and plan ahead will give you pristine, unbuffered content.

Sale prices + stackable coupons is always enough to get me to open up my duct-tape sealed wallet! Selling older upgraded Lifetimed Tivos has always worked out GREAT for me. I actually made a tiny profit last time.

Except for the No OTA thing. Can’t do that.

When my cable company does their yearly jack up of prices, I just cancel and fall back on the HD antenna in my attic, which actually gets most of the networks IN WINTER (no leaves) here in rural cow CT. It is great leverage to have OTA to fall back on. OTA is now a big part of my negotiating power and a MUST HAVE.

It is also my plan to cancel cable for the long term and just use OTA when my company finally realizes that my youthful good looks are masking the telomeres of a grizzled old timer all ready to be actively age discriminated against. When that happens, it is OTA DVRing and stored up canned dogfood for all! (and maybe one of the dogs…do we really need 2?)

I’ve had relatively cheap upgrades to the newest TiVo everytime thanks to the great resale of Lifetime’d TiVo’s. Until this time. The resale market on a 2 tuner Premiere seems pretty weak. I think I’ll only clear $275 after eBay/PayPal fees.

The $99 dealio to Lifetime old Premieres has probably saturated the resale market. And, in general, TiVo has fewer retail customers these days which maybe correlates in some way to potential customers.

Yeah, I have 2 Premieres sitting in my basement that I keep intending to call Tivo to get Lifetime on. One has an upgraded 2 TB hard drive and one doesn’t. Actually they bothe originally did but I gave away the upgraded drive already. When I have some free time I’ll call Tivo to try and get $99 lifetime on them if ebay prices are still holding.

Huh. At one point I would have jumped at this. But with the resale prices of XL4 Premieres w Lifetime crashing AND the fact that the update has really improved performance, the only reason to go for the new one is to get the extra tuners. Now once I get the 2nd Mini going I may miss the extra tuners. We’ll see. Still not compelled to jump just yet, especially knowing I’ll have a headache transferring shows, getting the new cable card authorized etc etc.

But no reduction on Lifetime for a Roamio (Basic). Quite sad. I know they make less money on the Roamio, but even a louse $50 on the Liftetime (as well as the coupon for the box) would be significant to TiVo’s lowest priced Roamio and—-WOULD START TO BE COMPELLING TO CORDCUTTERS!!!! The full special sale price of a Roamio with Lifetime should be really competitive with the DVR+w/internal HDD model. Once you bring those cord cutters to the Roamio, TiVo could start pushing the accessories like Mini and Stream. But TiVo’s attitude seems to be TS to those of us who can only use the Roamio for OTA. I guess the TiVo “Love” just doesn’t seem to ever visit us Roamio users.

Bill, not for the Plus. The code is $50 or whatever and it’s the same $600. Not to mention there’s a small amount of risk with the code and more complexity – many folks wouldn’t go down that path. But for the Pro and to pick up Minis, like ceugene mentioned, it’s a better deal for those aware and willing.

I simply skipped the Premiere same as I skipped the first Series 3 box as their first try. Nice that they sped up the premiere – I may well pick one up for cheap to replace my series IV and sit beside my roamio and do the OTA work

What’s holding me up this time is programming. Not TiVo’s code, actually TV programming.

I sold my Premier about a year ago and decided to go with Aereo, Hulu, etc. I’d watch it off and on but over time, it’s pretty rare when I watch TV and the strange part is that I’m a kid who grew up on TV. I’m not a huge book reader.

When Aereo lost the court battle I thought, “Maybe I should give cable TV another try…” Then I looked into the shows available on the various cable TV channels and realized, “No. I’m good.”

Discovery has “Mockumentaries” now like that mermaid one that people watched. I think there was another one advertised for the anniversary of landing on the Moon featuring ancient alien lunar structures or some such crap.

There there’s the History Channel which has Ancient Aliens where a spoon in your coffee mug may point back to ancient extraterrestrial technology.

The Weather Channel I don’t even think is really about weather any longer. DirecTV stopped carrying them because of that, if I remember correctly.

None of the news channels have much to do with news. It’s just endless talking head bringing up some recent news tidbit and then arguing about it for 10min. ESPN is much the same though they carry the odd game once in a while.

The last two network shows I was watching were Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. I gave up on those about 6 months ago. I know they’re still on with TBBT probably being close to the end of it’s run with the traditional comedic marriages happening soon, as is the way with all comedy shows.

So far no luck getting them to honor the $50 off I had confirmed on screen and printed out. CS rep said they will contact corporate for me, but said not to get my hopes up. Hopefully they’ll realize we’re talking about $50 on $1200+ worth of TiVo I ordered last week.

Eh, I’d just contest it with the credit card company – send them the screenshot. TiVo billed you a number different than what you agreed to which is probably a serious no-no. AmEx is the one who squared away my Roamio purchase issues with TiVo late last year.

You’re right, I need to call Amex. TiVo also told me they couldn’t credit me the $150+ to give me the $600 price till after the 30 day return period ended! We’ll see what Amex has to say about that one. Wish TiVo.com was more customer friendly while TiVo needs customers!

On a positive note, Roamio seems pretty great so far. I’m on a business trip to Maryland next two days, so looking forward to seeing if I can get out-of-home streaming to work.

I can’t vouch for any of the ebay folks – they’re basically selling retailer one-time use promotional pricing codes that you’d enter when ordering from tivo.com. I’d like to say ebay would get your back if anything went wrong either with the seller or in TiVo honoring the code, but I’ve had enough questionable experiences with ebay (and PayPal) that I’d be hesitant. Having said that, it seems a number of folks on the TiVo Community forum have had good luck going this route.